


Bibliothecae Prefectus

by AntipodeanPixie



Category: Fallout: New Vegas
Genre: Gen, Non-Standard Courier origins, Non-specific violence, Other EDE's demise, Ulysses' stalker obsession with the Courier, slow understanding
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-05-31
Updated: 2019-05-31
Packaged: 2020-03-31 00:29:58
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,369
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19038676
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/AntipodeanPixie/pseuds/AntipodeanPixie
Summary: The Courier was a Librarian, fascinated with what is and was and might yet be.Ulysses is a Frumentarii, fascinated by the Courier.





	Bibliothecae Prefectus

He would have called her callous, careless. At the least, she was not careful. She had carried the words of the Old World to the Giants in the Divide, awoke America. Watching her now, he thinks that she does take care if inconsistently. She croons to the eyebot, arms gentle around its metal casing like a frightened child as it plays back the words of its master. 

He never saw her fight in person before. This is the first time he’s seen her up close through the eye-bot. She’s fast. Strong. Stronger than the Marked Men, strips of the Bear and Bull flayed by the Divide. She seems untroubled by the dust or the wind. Her hair blows tangled and tattered in the storms every time he sees her, even as the blood and dirt on her blooms and fades. Courier Six holds no fear. He didn’t expect her to. Someone who can kill a nation in its cradle isn’t someone who fears. 

He wanted to make her see. 

He wanted her to understand.

He didn’t expect her to change the meaning. 

“What is the robot to you? Companion? Slave? Weapon? It’s a tool, nothing more.” 

“E-DE has a purpose. Fear, courage, desire. Loyalty. Those are the making of a person. Always, there have been the arguments about who are people. Who are worthy. And every time, the reply has been the same. Self awareness. Who am I? If they can ask that question, they’re a person.” 

Its behaviour changed in his eyes. It nudged under her arm. Settled near her. Monitoring, always monitoring. Reminded him of a trained hound. It chirped to her, called to her, followed her. Brought her a rebreather it found. Always so desperate for praise and affection, meaningless things for a mere tool. Perhaps, it was something more. Something that Courier Six gave it. 

“I’d like to see your hair. To learn the meanings. Send that history home, keep it with the other stories and facts.” 

“There’s no place for that history in the Mojave,” he told her, trying to ignore the sensation of a fist under his lungs. Nobody had heard that story in years. Nobody had asked for it. He remembered the White Legs. Their attempts to honour him, their slavish devotion to his lies heralding their own destruction as they heard the words but not the meanings, too easy to fool just as his own tribe had been.

“There’s always a place for all histories. No such thing as dead or useless history. You never know when someone will dig it up, learn, care.” 

He spoke of home. Home was a place all your roads returned to, and a hard loss to bear.

“Home is a lot of things. A place, a person, an idea. Not always somewhere you return, but it often is. That’s an old, pre-war saying. Home is where the heart is.” 

He promised to destroy her home. And he could see through the eyebot’s camera as she stared at E-DE, slightly off from the lens, behind the wrap around goggles that kept her eyes clear of dust. Something sad, something kind, something strong.

“You don’t know what my home is. Anyone in the Mojave who does, doesn’t know it’s mine. I haven’t stood there in a long time. But it’s where my words go.” 

She came to him in the Temple. Stood before him, open and closed. A book whose pages were laid out to him, in a language he wasn’t sure he understood. 

“You’re right. There is no future in Bear or Bull. Both have their own history. But they refuse to learn from the mistakes of it and they’ll fail in their own time. Nuke them, and you salt the earth. There will be nowhere for a new nation to grow from.” 

History would know what happened here. 

“History only survives when there’s someone to tell it. Otherwise, it’ll be just like the White Legs. Half the sight, none of the meaning.” 

And then she told him. Told him the truth of Mars, a lonely resurrected puppet from a crumbled empire over 2000 years dead. Told him the truth of the Roman Empire. How it fell. Told him how the Republics of old, numbers of them, fell. And always, it came back to not knowing that the road they trod had already been well paved.

Told him smoking craters in the sand would never be understood if they weren’t recorded, and that history meant nothing without someone to tell it. Told him that without the United States of America, a flag of stars and stripes meant nothing, but a dim memory really held only by relics and historians. Offered him something else. Something awake and alive.

And then they fought, together. Side by side and back to back, her claws extended. Even he didn’t get enough of a swing with Old Glory to rival the way she approached like a Nightstalker and struck like a Deathclaw. 

Blood stained over the bones and down her flesh, hair tangled and wild as she reached up to cup tender hands around the Enclave robot. 

“Send what you can to E-DE in the Mojave,” she’d told it, soft and sweet and sad and fierce. “Together, we’ll remember for you.” Stood back. You’ll have to fly very far, and very fast. Can you do that? I know you can. When it disintegrated, she crouched and scooped up some of the ash in a little tin. Tucked it inside her armour like something precious. The last sight of a home. 

They had to move quickly, the silo shaking around them, washes of heat and radiation as they escaped. No challenges to two Couriers. Leaping gaps, boosting each other. Ulysses lead the way, familiar with the landscape of the Divide in a way Courier 6 wasn’t. When climbing a rubble wall, his footing slipped. Nimble fingers clasped under his boot and lifted with surprising strength, and he pulled her after him. Concrete giving way under screaming metal and his balance tilting back, she caught his wrist to ground him.

Finally, breathing hard, sweating, they stood at the watch point at the top of the Divide, feeling the giants in the earth rumble and turn one last time. The Courier had left a water stash. She pulled it out, offered him one of the cans. Sat down in the sand beside him, the two of them looking out over the Divide. Pulled her hair around her shoulder. Red woven mess of strands and knots. Nothing like the precise twists, braids, beads of his tribe, purposefully done, but telling their own story. One of survival and courage. She wasn’t as cowardly as he had thought. Produced a comb. Small. Metal. One side wide, the other fine. Etchings in the long pointed handle. She began at the bottom of the mat. Slowly teasing out with fingers and tines. 

“Did the children have braids?” she asked. He looked at her over the edges of his rebreather. She continued to look out over the Divide, pausing only to fiddle with the old world technology on her wrist. 

“Did the children of the Twisted Hairs tribe have braids?” 

The wind was quiet up here. Gentle. Hands scrubbed clean with sand continued to pick at knots. 

“Not when they were still in arms. Their hair was left alone. Like dark clouds. Soft, unformed, full of promise.” There was, just faintly, longing in his voice. 

“Were braids earned?” one lock of hair passable with fingers. On to the next. 

“Yes. And no. First braids for family. To show who they belong to, whose history they inherit. Later came their own deeds. Beads for joy and sorrow. Braids for hunts. Twists for loves.” 

“And yours?” He hesitated, turned to watch her. She continued to watch the wastes. Fingers picking and rubbing. Contrast between where she’d been and where she was going. Smoothing out the tangles. Leaving it if not clean at least orderly. 

“Mine… are empty. No family, no children, no beads. My hunts belonged to Caesar. No braids in there. The locks…” he hesitated again, cogitating. The faint gleam of light on the metal comb. In the Mojave it would flash bright. Short sharp movements, a nest of snarls at the nape of the neck. Be easier if she cut it. Didn’t wear her hair so long. Perhaps it held her own history, in its smooth emptiness. Unlikely. She wasn’t tribal. Didn’t hold history in her person. And yet. 

Broad long fingers took the comb from slender calloused ones. He shifted his position a little. Pulled the higher locks to one side, exposing the nape. There were ways to kill her here. A jab in there, a twist up here. Instead he weighed the snarl beneath his fingers. Began to tease it out with his nails. 

Soft, but the texture was wrong. Lank and heavy, no curl or life. Close enough to be comfort with the similarity and torment with the difference. They spent long minutes there. The Courier staring into the Divide. Ulysses combing her hair, considering. 

“Grief.” He broke the silence. “My hair means grief.” 

“Complicated. Heavy.” The Courier acknowledged. “The White Legs. Their hair. I don’t know how to read Twisted Hairs braids. But I met someone once. The Think Tank.” He made a small sound of acknowledgement. “Doctor 8’s voice was damaged. When he speaks, he has meaning. But it comes out wrong. Garbled.” She paused, hummed, and then made a terrible series of sounds. It sounded like a malfunctioning robot, horrid and clashing and yet with the hint that there might be meaning under it. Ulysses’ hands stilled for a moment. It was… startlingly accurate. “Seeing the White Legs mimic… did it feel like that?” 

“Corrupted, blank, meaning layered and stripped to create nothing. A mockery.” He considered, pulling another hank of red hair over her shoulder to join the main body. It was getting easier now, hitting the parts she’d already worked on. Swapped to the fine side of the comb. “Yes. The feeling was familiar, but personal.” 

More silence. Then Courier Six began to talk.

“I am not a Courier. Not only a courier. I’m also a Librarian. A record keeper. The beginnings of my tribe came from books saved from the fires of the Old World. First, it was only preserving what we had to hand. The classics, the histories. Then we realised. History is being made here, now. In front of us. You can’t always know now what will be important later.” A slow sigh, and he knew she wasn’t done yet. 

“Edward Sallow was born in the Boneyards, NCR territory, in 2226. Meant the world to his mother, and his father. Meant nothing to the Mojave. A baby girl was born in a library, 26 years ago. Meant nothing to the Mojave. A town was founded, named Shady Sands. Meant nothing to the Mojave. Now Caesar marches on Hoover Dam against the NCR, and a Courier has a platinum chip. And we three mean everything to the Mojave.” 

A faint tug on her hair. 

“I built and destroyed the Divide. I didn’t know what I carried. How often did you? But now…” Hands came up to hold in front of her face, then turn to frame the stretch of land he’d already begun to think of as Courier’s Mile. “I have done. I have seen. I have learned.” Her hands cupped close. “I failed the Divide. I made mistakes. I will learn. Vegas will not suffer the same fate. Vegas… liber erit.” 

His hands were making the same passes over and over now. Her hair hung lank over her coat, combed back from the forehead. She was short. It was like brushing the hair of a child. But too long, too flat, no life. Sliding slipping through his fingers, no cohesion. He never realised that a small, far off sense memory would mourn this. Twisting the braids of his tribe. She turned in her seat to face him, taking the comb from him. Strange, the there and gone touch of another human being. Small, kind. She used the tail of it, sectioned hair back from the scar. One-Two, Maria’s Kiss. Fingers twisted quick, nimble. The hold on the hair subtly different. The one plait, close to the skull back along the crown, before she pinned it thoroughly. The entire time, brown eyes watched him. Her hands dropped to her lap. He sat back, weight propped on one hand, the other wrist resting on raised knee. She sat up straight, tilted her head. Then reached into a pocket. Pulled out a card, handed it to him. He tilted his head back, slow and measuring, as he accepted it. The design on the back… Sierra Madre. Looked like she’d walked there too. 

“3 of Clubs. I travelled the Mojave enough to know that much.” He observed.

“3 of Clubs. Man of thought, man of meaning. Words and actions matter, when they have them. Sad and melancholy, broken confidences and open enemies and partnerships. When you put down roots, they go deep. When they’re torn, it goes deep too.” Her eyes watched him. 

“All that in a card?” 

“Cartomancy. Seeing the future in the cards. Old World art and superstition.” She grinned at him then, a sudden flash of feral amusement. A flash of card out of her shirt collar and back in again. “Joker. Wild card, that completes whatever hand it chooses.” 

“You see the battle for the Mojave as a gamble, then. Skill and luck, playing off false faces and overextended hopes. A game.” Why did that disappoint him? 

“No.” She stood then, taller than him for once, and held out a small, calloused hand. “That was their mistake. Benny, House, Caesar, the NCR. They are here to play.” 

The wind pulled her hair, tall enough to be above the shelter of the cliff lip, except the one braid exposing her badge of honour and her refused ticket to the grave. A hand extended down to him, feet planted, eyes firm. Strong hands. Kind heart. 

“I am here to turn the tables over and drive them out.” 

He took her hand.


End file.
